As US Mulls TikTok Ban, AOC Takes to App to Protest Move
US Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) listens to colleagues speak about border policy, at the Capitol in Washington, US.
Democrat congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez created an account on TikTok to express her disapproval of the move after American lawmakers announced that they would proceed with plans to impose a nationwide ban on the Bytedance-owned social media platform.
Bytedance is a tech company based in China.
After company chief Shou Zi Chew appeared before a US House committee last week and was questioned for five hours, lawmakers from both sides of the aisle in the US are getting ready to take action against TikTok.
He was questioned by lawmakers about the app’s privacy and national security concerns.
In her first TikTok post, Ocasio-Cortez referred to the “unprecedented” nature of the action, which included thousands of videos uploaded by US TikTok users mocking the Congressional hearing and praising US lawmakers for being out of touch with technology.
A few legislators posed inquiries like “Does TikTok use wi-fi” which produced funny reactions however one segment of virtual entertainment clients additionally brought up that these inquiries were “innocent slip-ups”.
In the United States, TikTok has more than 150 million users, and many of them are opposing the move. It’s possible that the United States has never banned a social media powerhouse due to concerns about national security.
Ocasio-Cortez stated that there is sufficient evidence that other major companies also use personal data in ways that cannot be approved, and that this is despite the fact that the US government did not initiate such proceedings against bigwigs like Meta.
China is being accused by both the government of the United States and the Republicans in opposition of storing American users’ data on their servers and allowing the Communist Party of China (CPC) access to that data.
On Sunday, Republican leader and US House Speaker Kevin McCarthy asserted once more that the Chinese government has access to the app’s user data.